Lewis Hamilton launches vegan burger chain

Lewis Hamilton has announced he is to launch a sustainable vegan burger restaurant chain.

Neat Burger will open its first restaurant close to Regent Street, in London, on 2 September, with 13 other franchises planned for the next two years.

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The five-time Formula One world champion is a vegan himself and has collaborated on this new project with Tommaso Chiabara, an investor in Beyond Meat, as well as the hospitality company The Cream Group.

The Mercedes driver has been vocal about environmental issues and sustainable eating, even being named PETA’s “Person of the Year”.

He said: “Today we announce the launch of Neat Burger, a plant-based restaurant chain with a commitment to ethical practices and being kinder to our world. I’m so excited to be part of this company, which aims to revolutionise the way we view meat-free food.

"As someone who follows a plant-based diet, I believe we need a healthier high street option that tastes amazing but also offers something exciting to those who want to be meat-free every now and again.”

The new chain will partner up with Beyond Meat, the American vegan food manufacturers, to produce three core burgers – The neat,” “the cheese”, and “the chick’n” – as well as plant-based hot dogs.

As well as the food, there will be Jaden Smith’s Just Water stocked alongside, ethical sodas, soya and coconut-based milkshakes and London’s Toast Ale, brewed using excess bread that would ordinarily be thrown away.

Chiabra added: “The meat industry is the biggest contributor to greenhouse emissions and its environmental impact is no longer sustainable together with the growth of the population. Neat Burger aims to disrupt the non-sustainable food industry and become a force for good.”

Beyond Meat’s prominence within the food industry has risen, with the company producing plant-based protein products including sausages and crumbles as well as burgers.

A peer-reviewed Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) conducted by the University of Michigan compared Beyond Meat patties with a standard beef. It found it required less water, less land, less energy and generates fewer Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHGE).

While the vegan food industry is growing quickly, adding’s Hamilton’s cache to this latest player in the market will no doubt prove a popular selling point for the brand. It comes less than a year after track legend Usain Bolt launched his own London’s restaurant Tracks & Records, although it did already have venues in Kingston, Ocho Rios and Montego Bay, in Jamaica.